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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8620091" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's possible to treat hit points as a simulationist mechanic. Some of us think the resulting fiction is too silly to take seriously.For instance, the frost giant minions in my 4e version of G2 had 1 hp each. This doesn't have the same meaning as a feeble commoner with 1 hp. It means that, when a mid-epic hero strikes a well-aimed blow at one of those giants, the giant will fall. A simulationist reading makes the giants absurd.EDIT: A further thought on this.Edwards refers to the &quot;imagined cosmos in action&quot;. What I've described above, about frost giant minions, is the opposite of that.On a simulationist approach, we find out the narrative/&quot;story&quot; role of a frost giant - was this giant doomed to fall to a single blow? - by applying the mechanics and seeing the cosmos in action. So unless doomed to die in a single blow is itself a phenomenon of the imagined cosmos, we only find out afterwards whether the giant was one of the doomed. (Eg in RM, the first PC to hit it double-open endeds their crit roll and brings the giant crashing down.)Whereas 4e's approach is to settle the fiction/narrative/&quot;story&quot; first - this is a doomed frost giant - and then to build a mechanical structure that will give effect to that. So it's not the imagined cosmos in action - rather, the design an application of the mechanics puts a &quot;metagame&quot; thumb on the scales.I think a leading example of the &quot;metagame thumb&quot; approach to action resolution is Robin Laws's HeroQuest revised, where difficulties are set purely by reference to pacing (basically, the longer the players' string of successes, the harder things get, until they fail). But AW and its immediate offshoots also have this, in that the spread of results - 6-, 7-9, 10+ - is constant, and is not varied to reflect ingame difficulties/obstacles. And this is also for pacing/narrative-type reasons.I think, for me, the clarity of the differences across these various ways of approaching action resolution is what makes me relatively comfortable in classifying particular mechanics and their associated procedures and implementation methodologies as simulationist, or not.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8620091, member: 42582"] It's possible to treat hit points as a simulationist mechanic. Some of us think the resulting fiction is too silly to take seriously. For instance, the frost giant minions in my 4e version of G2 had 1 hp each. This doesn't have the same meaning as a feeble commoner with 1 hp. It means that, when a mid-epic hero strikes a well-aimed blow at one of those giants, the giant will fall. A simulationist reading makes the giants absurd. EDIT: A further thought on this. Edwards refers to the "imagined cosmos in action". What I've described above, about frost giant minions, is the opposite of that. On a simulationist approach, we find out the narrative/"story" role of a frost giant - was this giant doomed to fall to a single blow? - by applying the mechanics and seeing the cosmos in action. So unless [i]doomed to die in a single blow[/i] is itself a phenomenon of the imagined cosmos, we only find out afterwards whether the giant was one of the doomed. (Eg in RM, the first PC to hit it double-open endeds their crit roll and brings the giant crashing down.) Whereas 4e's approach is to settle the fiction/narrative/"story" first - [i]this is a doomed frost giant[/i] - and then to build a mechanical structure that will give effect to that. So it's not the imagined cosmos in action - rather, the design an application of the mechanics puts a "metagame" thumb on the scales. I think a leading example of the "metagame thumb" approach to action resolution is Robin Laws's HeroQuest revised, where difficulties are set purely by reference to pacing (basically, the longer the players' string of successes, the harder things get, until they fail). But AW and its immediate offshoots also have this, in that the spread of results - 6-, 7-9, 10+ - is constant, and is not varied to reflect ingame difficulties/obstacles. And this is also for pacing/narrative-type reasons. I think, for me, the clarity of the differences across these various ways of approaching action resolution is what makes me relatively comfortable in classifying particular mechanics and their associated procedures and implementation methodologies as simulationist, or not. [/QUOTE]

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